Where The Newspaper Stands

September 09, 2005

View from abroad

As Americans react to New Orleans, the world is watching

The number of letters pouring into this newspaper about Hurricane Katrina bears comparison to a flood. Quite clearly, people are moved by what they've seen and feel the need to speak out. We'll accommodate that as best we can.

Some write about the human misery. Some fault the response to the disaster. Others defend the Bush administration. The energy and environmental questions are explored.

But another point involves how America is perceived by the rest of the world during this unprecedented event. And toward that end, the message below from a reader is worthwhile:

I am a resident of Newport News and have lived here for almost five years after moving from Australia. My brother is an Australian who has been watching with some distress the unfolding story of Hurricane Katrina. He sent me this e-mail this morning and gave me his approval to send it on to you. As he said, it's important that people understand the world is watching and perhaps an Australian's views would be of interest to your readers.

My brother's name is Colin Clarke and he lives in Hastings, Victoria, Australia. My name is Pat Buoncristiani and I live in Newport News. Here are his comments:

LETTER FROM AUSTRALIA

Oh boy!!! What is happening in/to the United States? I was watching our multicultural TV network, SBS, last night and the story that grabbed me was this UK TV reporter who brought his own boat to see how things were in the flooded parts of New Orleans.

As he headed down the waterway that was once a road he was hailed from a house. Inside were three young kids whose mother had died. She was lying dead in the bedroom. Leaving the dead behind, the TV reporter took the kids into his boat and set off to find them some help.

He went back again and this time came across two elderly brothers who also had a dead person in the house, their mother. They had placed her body in sheets and had hung her from the porch rafters, in other words, outside, but safe.

It was over a week since the hurricane, but a foreign TV reporter was helping these folk! There wasn't a sign of any official help in the flooded streets he went down. There were no other boats, no other New Orleans boats belonging to people from New Orleans who had survived. There were no American boats! No boats but his.

I listened later to the conscience of Australia, Philip Adams, as he interviewed three Americans from New Orleans. One said that Amtrak had offered trains to move the victims; FEMA never called them back. Another said that the U.S. Forest Service had said, look we have aerial tankers that can put out these fires you have down there. Not wanted!

It seems that the police, National Guard and other agencies involved can't connect with each other by radio.

Is it all a consequence of the new free (for-all) market, where a new generation of "every-man-for-himself" people have arisen? Does no one really care about them anymore? Governments like the Bush one just don't seem to. In the last three years more U.S. money has been spent on flood control in the Iraq marshes than in the state of Louisiana.

As for Mr. Bush, when I heard him say that no one thought the levees would break, I thought, where does he live? We knew in Australia three years ago that the biggest hurricane threat in the USA was the New Orleans levees.

Colin C (Sad) *

Oh, the complexity

Kilgore jumps on immigration, but lands where?

Having dined with the red meat crowd, where distinctions over legal and illegal immigrants frequently get lost, Jerry Kilgore has shifted venues, emerged as Mr. Reasonable and said that it should be "easier for immigrants to come to this nation legally."

Speaking to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Chantilly, Kilgore was good cop. "We should honor those who have played by the rules and become legal residents of our nation," Kilgore said in prepared remarks. "It is government's solemn duty to help law-abiding citizens make their way, find employment and achieve the American and Virginia dream."

But just a week earlier, Kilgore was bad cop, consorting with talk-radio rabble-rousers and assorted other defenders of the southern border (the northern one never seems to enter the conversation) and denouncing plans made by the town of Herndon to get day-workers to assemble, not on the streets, but in a publicly financed facility.

"It is likely that most of the workers for whom these centers are to be created are in fact illegally present and should not be receiving taxpayer-funded services," said Kilgore.

Not that Kilgore would actually know, but "likely" seemed to fulfill his threshold requirement of jumping into the fray.

Before the Hispanic group, however, Kilgore was all lightness and good will. "So I say this very clearly: If day-laborer sites are built that ensure our laws are followed, I will support those sites full heartedly."